PARED CIRCULAR

Like other members of the Teach For America corps, I have a quarterly “co- investigation” cycle. It’s basically one of the ways Teach For America provides continued professional development after we leave Institute. The cycle involves

submitting plans and data to Betsy, my program director. She then comes in and observes a lesson I teach, and then we meet together to talk about what she’s seeing and what some next steps for improvement might be.

Betsy makes the process productive and unintimidating, but I still dress things up for her. What I mean is, I’m more on edge than usual, and I plan more carefully for this lesson than I do for others. I make sure the classroom is clean, and I warn my students that someone will come in, that they should be on their best behavior. I want to make a good impression so I can keep Teach For America staff members off my back. I don’t want Betsy to think I’m a lousy teacher. And yes, of course, these attitudes completely miss the point of a co-investigation.

During one such lesson with Betsy in the room, some of the usual takes place. Franklin calls out without raising his hand. Lamaar refuses to complete his assigned work. Kayla is a little over-helpful to the classmates around her, which annoys them. Someone greets Betsy and asks her if she is my girlfriend. But no fights break out. No one swears at me or at Betsy. No one storms out of the room. This is a relief if not a complete success.

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Meanwhile, the FCAT is fast approaching for my students. The acronym has been drilled into our heads all year long, and despite my own vows not to, even I use the state

standardized test as a motivational tool. My body even seems to grasp the importance of the test because lately it has forgotten how to sleep and digest food. My stomach aches and burns. At night, I shut my bedroom lights off and collapse into bed shortly after eating dinner. If I could just fall asleep for a few hours. Instead I toss and turn until I

reach over to my nightstand and flick the light back on. I grab the book I’m reading: Donna Foote’s Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach For America. The

story tracks four first-year Teach For America teachers in Los Angeles, and the material is all too familiar. Foote’s words offer commiseration, catharsis, solace, and affirmation:

He had worried all weekend. He’d barely slept, and when he did finally nod off, he’d awakened with a knot in his stomach. He kept thinking about school, about the upcoming week, about the kid he had punished and the kid he had not. All the veteran teachers had warned him not to take things in the classroom personally. Well, for him that was impossible.

When I can’t read anymore, I reach for my laptop. I log in and type in the URL for my blog. I fire off a post about teaching. It’s full of misdirected anger and blame. If my students don’t understand all this knowledge and these skills I’m trying to impart into them then maybe at least my audience of 100 or however many Internet users will see how much better things would be if everyone in this world just do things the way I want them to. By three a.m., I’m still trying unsuccessfully to sleep, so I get out of bed and grab the teacher’s version of our class textbook. I leave my bedroom, turn on a light in our dining room, sit down at the table, and start working on an upcoming lesson plan. No

I’m typing away when Rick stumbles out of his bedroom. “What the hell are you doing?” he says. He slips into his bathroom before I can answer. He doesn’t say anything on the way back into his bedroom.

Later in the day, I tell Shane about the long nights and how sick I feel. His school isn’t far from mine, but for whatever reasons, his first year has gone better than mine. He feels supported by his colleagues, and he says he likes his teaching load and students.

“You should see a doctor,” he tells me.

One Thursday night, while dreading the prospect of another sleepless night, I heed Shane’s advice. At about 10:00 p.m., instead of going to bed, I drive down the street to a hospital emergency room and fill out the appropriate paperwork. I’ve never done this before, and I don’t know why I chose this method for getting my body checked out, other than the fact that it fits my overall lifestyle of impulsivity. The room is packed with people, many of them black. Kids and families occupy every chair in the waiting room. Others sit on the floor and lean with their backs against the wall.

I figure it will be a while, so I open my book and read some more from Foote: Three months before, he’d been a party-loving senior at Boston College with a double major and great grades. Now he felt so…sad. Overnight he had gone from being a twenty-one-year-old kid with no responsibilities to a man who woke up before sunrise. The old fun-loving Hrag was gone. In his place was an overworked, stressed-out, lonely guy winging it as a teacher in a dysfunctional inner-city school thousands of miles from his home in New Jersey. More than one person had stopped to ask him what was wrong. He looked terrible. His hair was always a mess, his tie awry, his eyes heavy with fatigue behind his thick glasses. It wasn’t just the hard work and the long hours that bothered him—or the fact that he had no girlfriend at a time when he needed one most. It was the idea that if he failed, it wasn’t just him. His kids failed, too.

It’s after midnight before someone calls my name. I look up. A young nurse in sky-blue scrubs leads me through the hospital maze. I smell all kinds of aromas: cleaning

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curtain and tells me to sit on the bed. She asks me a few questions while taking my temperature and measuring my blood pressure. She hands me a gown and tells me to change into it after she leaves. She also gives me the remote for a little television that hovers in front of me. I don’t turn it on. Instead, I struggle to put the gown on. Which

way goes in front and why do I feel so naked in this thing?

A doctor – tall, probably in his forties – walks in. After an obligatory

introduction, he tells me to lift my shirt up. I explain my symptoms as he presses on different parts of my abdomen. He asks me about my sleeping, bathroom, and eating patterns and scribbles a few notes down. He leaves without much speculation as to what my problem might be.

The nurse returns and tells me to follow her to an x-ray room. In a dark room full of machinery, the technician snaps shots of me while lying on my back, lying on my stomach, and standing up. Then, the nurse leads me back to my room and leaves me there. I try to sleep. The doctor comes back in and tells me the x-rays didn’t show much and that a CAT scan is the next logical step. I’ve never had a CAT scan, but I have had several MRIs for knee injuries, so I get the basic idea: lie still in a small tube that’s shooting toxic rays into your body to figure out what the hell’s going on.

The nurse pulls out a needle to inject me with dye that will make my insides more visible during the scan. I make sure to announce that I hate needles, then I look away while she pierces my lower arm. It’s been hours since I parked my car at the hospital, and in just a few hours, I’ll be greeting my fifth graders. I decide that someone needs to invent fast-medical-care so we can get diagnosed as quickly as we can get a Big Mac.

The nurse leads me to where I’ll get the CAT scan. This room is larger and better- lit than the x-ray room. More medical personnel introduce themselves to me, but I quickly forget all of their names. Someone tells me to lie down on my back on top of a shiny surface. I place my feet near a daunting cylinder-like machine that’s barely larger than my body. They hand me a set of headphones and tell me I’ll hear music during the scan. They push me forward and tell me to be as still as possible for a half hour. With my hands at my side, and only my head emerged from the tight-fitting tube, I lie there, bored and so tired. I’d rather be in my own bed, sleeping. While I’m at it, I want the school year to be over already and for my kids to have learned how to read on my watch.

After the scan, I’m sent back to my little room. The nurse comes back in and admits they still have no idea what is wrong with me. “We’ve decided it’s best to admit you for the day.”

Panic grips me. I have no plans in place for a substitute, and I strongly prefer to plan for my misses. “I can’t do that,” I inform her. “I have to teach in a few hours.”

She looks at me. “You can’t miss a day?” “Not right now,” I tell her.

“Okay, suit yourself. The doctor will be in to talk to you soon, then maybe we’ll release you.”

The doctor comes in and suggests I try a combination of laxatives, probiotics, and more fruits and vegetables. The lack of clarity after a night of tests is exasperating, but at least the doctor finally lets me leave. I glance at my phone: it’s about 5 a.m.

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At school, I bump into Danica. Things had been a little awkward since our dinner conversation, but she doesn’t act like she hates me, and I consider that a victory. I explain how I’d spent my night.

“Chris, you’re probably just stressed,” she says.

“I’m not stressed,” I say, annoyed at any sort of suggestion that this whole thing might actually be getting to me.

I’m a zombie for most of the school day, but I make it through. After school, I have a follow-up meeting with Betsy to conclude our co-investigation cycle. I drive downtown to meet her at our corporate Teach For America office. I find a place to park that doesn’t require me to pay. I’m running a few minutes late, though, and as I’m trying to grab all the appropriate paperwork, I leave the keys in the ignition. I get out of the car and realize what I’ve done just after I flip the lock up and shut the door. I have no choice but to go inside and deal with this new crisis later. When Betsy asks me how I’m doing, I don’t say anything about my worries about the FCAT or my physical health concerns – I still don’t want her to think I’m anything but the first-year corps member who has his shit together – but I do tell her I just locked my keys in the car. She doesn’t let us continue until I’ve found a staff member in the offices who has Triple-A and lets me use her account to get someone who can help heading our way.

Then Betsy and I dive into conversation about her observation and the data I have for how my students are going. We talk specifically about the skill of “checking my students’ understanding.” The right questions to ask and who, when, and why to ask them. She gives me a few resources to look at and suggests I start scripting some

A guy is here to unlock my car. Before I go, Betsy reminds me about a dinner with potential Teach For America donors the following week and asks if I’d be willing to give a speech. I agree to it, even as I know this will be just one more thing to do. I ask her what, exactly, should I talk about?

“I don’t want to be too specific in telling you what to say,” she answers. “I know you’re a writer, and you’ll come up with something good. Just tell them your story, how you got here, what you’ve seen so far. Send me a draft when it’s ready.”

I say goodbye, and the Triple A guy helps me break into my car. It’s finally the weekend. With any wisdom or self-care, I would spend a lot of time in my bed, trying to get healthy, and mix in some speech-writing breaks. Instead, I drive six hours one way to Charlotte, North Carolina, to spend the next forty-eight hours with Neal, my friend and former roommate in D.C. The same Neal who wanted to know why I was applying to Teach For America. He’s on leave from his Naval term in Japan. We tour downtown, hit the batting cages, play H-O-R-S-E in his driveway, and eat at Bojangles. All I want is to feel good for just a few hours, but I still can’t sleep at night, and my body has no idea what to do with the grease I’ve just fed it. Is this what heartburn feels like? Do I have an ulcer? Whatever the problem is, I just want to know!

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